Current Affairs

TV Stars Nab Oscars Noms

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Who could  ever have imagined that Thomas Haden Church would be nominated for an Academy Award… a man whose last major film role was in "George of the Jungle II?"

In his LA Times interview, Church says:

Though he definitely considers "Sideways" a career comeback [Note: That’s an understatement], Church is getting a
little tired of the mythology that seems to have grown up around his casting —
that he was as big a has-been as his character [Note:  He was].

"I’m very flattered by
all the attention," he says, "but there is this tone among some journalists that
Alexander had to pry the lid from my coffin. It wasn’t quite like that. I hadn’t
done anything high-profile in a few years, but … I had 11 years starring in
television."

Church came to the public’s attention in 1990 as oblivious
Lowell Mather during the five-year run of "Wings." Then he starred for two years
with Debra Messing in "Ned and Stacey." His switch to film could be described as
"challenging." He worked steadily — starring as Jane’s sleazy fiancé in "George
of the Jungle" and its sequel — but often in films that never found a
distributor.

Crystal Bernard should start shopping for an Oscar dress… it could be her turn in a few years. Joking and astonishment aside,  Church was truly wonderful in "Sideways" and I’m glad to see him getting the nomination…

Actually, the entire Best Supporting Actor category was filled with TV Actors … Alan Alda (M*A*S*H), Jamie Foxx ("Roc," "The Jamie Foxx Show," etc.), Clive Owen ("Second Sight," "Sharman,"  "Chancer") and Morgan Freeman ("The Electric Company").

Granted, Morgan Freeman is stretching it… he has been a movie star for many years now but still, it’s pretty incredible how many of those actors spent years in the series television grind. 

This Oscar nom could do for Church what it did for James Cromwell and Martin Landau, two other actors who were slogging around in TV before their surprise nominations. Cromwell’s immediate credits before  "Babe" included guest-shots on "Matlock" and "Diagnosis Murder" and a short run as a regular on "The Last Precinct." Martin Landau joined "Tucker" after his Emmy-ignored performances in "Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island" and "Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman." After that, Cromwell and Landau because movie stars… it would have been inconceivable to imagine Landau starring in a Woody Allen film before "Tucker" revived his career.

On a different topic, I was disappointed by the Best Original Score nominations… do we really need to nominate John Williams again…and for the third rehash of a score (Harry Potter) that he’s been nominated for (and perhaps won, I can’t recall) before? I would like to have seen Edward Shearmur’s wonderful "Sky Captain" score nominated… along with Michael Giacchino’s wildly inventive and invigorating "Incredibles" score (which may have been snubbed because it emulated so many of John Barry’s Bond cues).

Ed Gorman’s Blog…

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…has moved to a new address. He kicks things off with his take on all the Robert B. Parker bashing in the blogosphere lately.

The consensus judgment seems to be that he wrote brilliantly early on,
that in fact he rescued the entire private eye genre from malaise and
cliche, and that he brought tens of thousands of new readers to the
form.

I agree with all of that.

Where I have trouble is the funeral pyre so many of his critics seem to be building.

Ed thinks the Jesse Stone novels prove Parker is still at the top of his game.  I don’t disasgree.  I wish Parker would rest Spenser for awhile, abandon the Sunny Randall books, and ride with Jesse for awhile.  Maybe if he took a break from the Spensers for a couple years he would rediscover the character…and maybe find a fresh take on a hero who is anything but fresh these days.

Dollars and Cents

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Publisher’s Lunch,  email digest version of Publisher’s Marketplace,  today defined the terms they use to describe book deals in their reporting…

"nice deal" $1 – $49,000
"very nice deal" $50,000 – $99,000
"good deal"
$100,000 – $250,000
"significant deal" $251,000 – $499,000
"major deal"
$500,000 and up

What universe are they living in where $100,000-$250,000 is simply "a good deal" and $250,000-$499,000 is  "significant?"

Outsourcing Signings

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Author Margaret Atwood has stirred up quite a controversy by creating a "remote booksigning device" that would allow her to "attend" booksignings without actually being there.  She wrote about her invention, and the controversy, in today’s Los Angeles Times.

In an effort to simplify the most grueling part of the book-publication process
— the dreaded Author Tour — I dreamed up the concept of a remote book-signing
device. (I’ve spent far too many evenings crawling around on hotel room floors,
eating Pringles because I was too exhausted to call room service, so I needed
this!) The author would be able to relax at his or her home base and could see
and speak with a book buyer in a bookstore thousands of miles away. That much
can happen already.

But in addition, the author would be able to
actually sign — in real time, and with real ink — the book buyer’s book (or the
singer’s album, or the actor’s photograph). You would no longer have to be in
the bookstore to write "Happy Birthday, Aunt Sylvia." You would simply write on
a little pad (somewhat like the one the UPS messenger brings to your door) and
on the other end, your message and signature would be duplicated in the book.

Think of the plane trips avoided, the beer nuts left uneaten in the
hotel mini-bar, and — from the publisher’s point of view — the money saved! For
it costs a lot to whiz a bunch of disoriented and grumpy authors around the
world.

That’s exactly what she’s doing…thinking of the author or,more accurately, herself. What she’s proposing is the customer support approach towards her readers.  What’s wrong with an automated menu and no live operator? What’s wrong if that live operator is someone you can barely understand in Singapore or India? It’s still customer service, right? RIGHT?

She’s forgetting the personal touch, the human interaction. The respect. It’s not just the signature that’s important to most readers, it’s the chance to meet someone who has had a dramatic and often emotional impact on their lives and imaginations. It’s a way to meet someone who has inspired and entertained you. It’s also a way for authors to see the face of the people they are writing for, the people who have supported them in their art. It’s a way to say "Thank you," for both author and reader.  It’s not just a signature. And looking into a computer screen and shaking hands with a robot arm isn’t quite the same thing. What’s astonishing is that she doesn’t get that… or maybe she does.

The only difference between the author-at-a-distance and the author-in-the-flesh
would be that no author’s DNA would get onto the book, and no readers’ germs
would get onto the author.

I think this is where she betrays her real attitudes towards signings and her readers.  But there’s something else I find personally offensive about her booksigning-at-a-distance machine: it’s her broad, caricatured characterization of authors as cranky assholes who think it’s a burden to meet readers.

This may come as shock to Margaret Atwood and everyone else on the planet Vulcan, but lots of authors enjoy meeting their readers, enjoy the personal contact, and derive enormous pleasure from being able to sign their books in person.

She may have unintentionally succeeded in her goal of avoiding book tours. Given her attitude towards signing and readers, who would ever want this woman to sign their books again? Who would ever want her in their store? Not me.

The Iconoclast

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After only a week "on the air," novelist Richard S. Wheeler seems to have shut-down his blog, The Iconoclast. It’s a shame, because I was enjoying his posts and looking forward to his ruminations on the state of westerns in publishing today. The blog generated a healthy discussion almost right away with his take on the demise of the midlist. Anybody know why he decided to quit so soon?

It’s a Blog. It’s a Book. It’s Both

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Bob Sassone, one of our frequent visitors here, is launching a book blog. Er. Blog book. Ah hell, I’ll let him tell you.

"Letters To Martha", my new novel, launches today. I know, I know, you’re
thinking many things.  You have a new novel?  Martha who?  How can a novel
"launch"? And should I ask my doctor about Lipitor?  That last one is
between you and your doctor, but here’s the web site for the
book:

http://letterstomartha.blogspot.com/

It’s a blog novel.  A
novel, because that’s how I originally wrote it, and it’s a blog
because…well, if you haven’t heard they’re all the sa-hizzle with the
hip kids nowadays.

There’s a more in-depth answer to the "why put
it online" question.  Read it
here:

http://sassone.tripod.com/ltminterview.html

This also
fulfills my promise I made to you a year and a half ago, about giving all of
you a free novel as thanks for reading my stuff.  It will be updated
every Tues and Thurs with new entries.  You can leave comments at the blog
if you’d like (for now anyway – let’s see if anyone abuses that little
feature), and it will run until March/April, just in time for Martha’s
release from the pokey.  Let me know what you think. 

Time Management

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My buddy author Gregg Hurwitz talks on his infrequently updated blog about the ordeal of proofing his galleys… and the difficulty juggling the various demands on a writer’s time. He mentions some advice he got from James Patterson Inc:

The exchange was simple:

JP: Do you write on the road?
GH: No, I can’t.
JP (with great gravity): Learn.

And
so I have. Now when I’m working on a rough draft, I won’t let anything
short of an emergency interrupt it. I write on planes, in hotel rooms,
in the car (no, not when I’m driving).

I write anywhere and everywhere. Writing for TV trained me to do that, particularly when  you’re in production and jetting off to locations in Vancouver,  Toronto, Orlando, New York, Boston or London, as I have done.  I have no problem writing in a hotel room or on an airplane…and often had no choice if I was going to meet the shooting schedule. Great motivator, the shooting schedule.

That said,  writing on an airplane… especially in coach class… took some getting used-to. In first class, there’s some space between you and your fellow passenger. In coach, they are looking right over your shoulder and at every word you type on screen. They can’t help themselves. It’s like a TV set.  It’s very hard to write when a complete stranger is watching you do it,  especially if what you’re writing involves sex or violence.  I’ve had to learn to just tune out the stranger and go for it.

Michael Avallone

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The tie-in talk here and on other blogs  has blossomed into several  discussions and remembrances of the late Michael Avallone, author of many tie-ins as well as the Ed Noon detective novels. Here’s a sampling of the what’s being said.

Over on James Reasoner’s blog:

All this makes me think of the original King of the TV Tie-in Novel. Max Allan Collins probably has that title today, but in the Sixties it was Michael Avallone who turned out more tie-in novels (and movie novelizations) than anybody else. The first Avallone novel I ever read, in fact, was a TV tie-in: THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. He also wrote novels for THE GIRL FROM U.N.C.L.E., THE FELONY SQUAD, HAWAII FIVE-0, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, MANNIX, THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY (some of Avallone’s best-selling books, in fact, were Partridge Family novels), and
probably other series that I’m forgetting at the moment. When I read Avallone’s MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. novel (bought brand-new off the paperback rack at Buddie’s Supermarket) as a 12-year-old, I realized
for the first time that a writer could have such a distinctive voice that his work can’t be mistaken for anyone else’s. And I liked that voice well enough so that for a long time after that, I picked up every
Avallone novel I came across.

Over on Ed Gorman’s blog:

My all time favorite Avallone story concerns a piece he wanted to
write for Mystery Scene about his friend Cornell Woolrich. I’d been dealing with Mike for several years so I knew the pitfalls. He wrote me a query letter about the Woolrich piece and I wrote back and said All
right, Mike, but just remember the disagreements we’ve had in the past. Make this piece about Woolrich and not about you.

Couple weeks later the piece comes in and it starts off very well. Here comes Avo up to Woolrich’s shabby little hotel room, they have a beer and talk, and then Avo says, Cornell, I want to interview you.

To which Cornell allegedly says, Mickey, I’m tired of being interviewed. Let’s talk about you.

So, according to Avo, the night turns into a love fest about the genius of one Michael Avallone. The whole freaking piece is Avo talking about himself.

There’s more, much more, to this funny story and I encourage you to visit Ed’s blog and read it.

Meanwhile, over on Bill Crider’s blog:

My own favorite Avo tale is that when he made a list of the Top Ten Private-Eye Novels of All Time, he put two of his own books on it. As I recall, however, he did modestly give Raymond Chandler the #1 position.

I don’t have any stories about Avallone to share, I only met him once at a paperback book show. I did read one of his original novels once… THE SATAN SLEUTH… but I don’t remember a thing about it beyond it’s cheesy title.